Life is an unfinished symphony. God holds the score in His Hands. Sometimes my life is a cymbal crash, and sometimes it is pages of counting rests. But always, He is the Conductor. (...and I hear the Coda He's written is out of this world!)

Thursday, September 18, 2008

"Teacher," said John, "we saw someone driving out demons in your name and we told him to stop, because he was not one of us." "Do not stop him," Jesus said. "No one who does a miracle in my name can in the next moment say anything bad about me, for whoever is not against us is for us. Truly I tell you, anyone who gives you a cup of water in my name because you belong to the Messiah will certainly be rewarded." [Mark 9:38-41 TNIV]

This breaks my heart for two reasons:

1) So often we get this idea that doing things for God is "our" job... that if people don't play by "our" rules and do things "our" way that we somehow have the right to criticize them. So while we take theological potshots at one another, we are destroying our own witness. I may think Reverend Whooper is off of his rocker... I may not like the way that Sister Fake Eyelashes waves around her KJV and her bling-laden hands... and I may disagree with the politics or polity of any male OR female pastor I could name... But who am I (and who are YOU?) to critique and blame? And do I understand how my actions and attitudes can shred the credibility of what I say I believe??

2) The smallest things - "a cup of water" - these will be rewarded. They are noticed by God. And, the total LIFE experience and heart attitude of those who do even more will be judged severely. I believe that. I'm living that... or trying to... I do not want to become someone who builds spiritual machines and monoliths. Lord, deliver me from making myself into any more - or less - than what you have in mind for my future ministry!

Quotes that give me hope!

“A female must encounter, on all sides, an inveterate prejudice, founded on a misconstruction of the scriptures.” (pp. 63-64).from the autobiography ofEllen Brown Hickox Stewart,my thrice-great-grandmother.

"This is beautiful work--simple, genuine, redemptive. It shouldn't seem radical... but it is. It shouldn't even be necessary to say 'men and women are equal...' but it is. Hopefully, in another ten years, the saints of CBE will end gender inequality and put themselves out of jobs. Until then, may we all live in discomfort amid a booming choir of white men, while the church is pregnant with women who are ready to lead and write and preach but still get funny looks or cold shoulders."

Unreached People: The Joshua Project

Quotable and Keepable

Arise then...women of this day! Arise, all women who have hearts! Whether your baptism be of water or of tears! Say firmly:"We will not have questions answered by irrelevant agencies, our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause. Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn all that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience. We, the women of one country, will be too tender of those of another country to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs."